Treasure Tuesday

It's been a weird week.  More snow, but street finally plowed on Sunday.  Eating more but somehow losing a chunk of the weight I gained during the storms.  Classes held, but more than my poor senses could handle.

It's no wonder that I finally went to the penny crock and the silver jar.

Overall, I believe I looked at several thousand pennies and well over $266 in quarters, dimes, and nickels.  Okay, the last I know for sure - I rolled the non-state quarters - but the first is a guess (and if anyone can compute the volume of a large bean pot, then divide by the volume of the average penny, to see how many I actually scrutinized ... you really need a life).  It was a very strange experiment, this first taste of "coin roll" hunting on steriods, but quite satisfying.  And, as usual, I learned several things ... including a few shortcuts.

First, pennies are fiddly things to hunt.  I decided that even though there are an astonishing number of valuable pennies out there, I would limit myself to hunting for odd or wheat-backed coins now, and save the rest for closer scrutiny (mainly because I needed a magnifying glass that I could find to read dates and mint marks).  Still, I found some fabulous things.

Found:  52 wheat-backed pennies (earliest is 1920)
              7 Canadian pennies
              3 new US pennies (for the grandkids)
              2 English pennies (one with a young QE II)
              2 Indian Heads

Lost:  the tiniest bit of eyesight ... maybe some sanity

Not surprisingly, I'm really psyched about those Indian Heads.  One is from 1886, the other from 1905.  My husband (who actually knows coins) says the 1886 is the rarest but is in tragic shape (don't remember his "grade" but it's pretty worn down ... and I feel its pain).  But the 1905 is in very good shape - not mint, but sharp and clear.  It's about $20 in pennies, I suspect, just from those two.

One day, I will go back and look for the 1969-S with double-die obverse, and the 1970-S small date Lincoln, and the 1970 no-mint doubled and the 1999 Wide "AM" thingie.  Probably more than just that ( I snatched those from a Most Valuable Coins in Circulation web site and I know there are tons more) but after four hours I was a bit punchy.  And I smelled like the inside of my mouth after the Big Lug drove us over the ice moguls that once disguised themselves as our street.  (I bit my tongue.  And blood tastes coppery.  Or is that TMI?)

So, yesterday I started on the giant pickle jar (Costco is wonderful) in which I put the other pocket change.  I was totally ready for those Big Things, those retirement-fattening finds.  I sorted and I shifted and I studied, and I found ... two silver dimes.

Compared to the excitement of the Copper Quest, this was pretty anticlimactic.  Turns out, there's not too many valuable quarters, dimes, or nickels that aren't silver.  Oh, the state quarters have their Wisconsin 2004-D (with an extra leaf) that I searched for (separately, luckily - states are in their own container for the grandkids), and there's always the double-struck things to find (are they really out there anywhere?).  But I expected ... hoped for ... more.  Yet I got ... well, it was the dimes, and the fact that I found my standing magnifier, that made me crazy.  I was looking so hard.  In fact, until the moment I started putting them in stacks and just looking at the edges, it never occured to me there was a faster way to search.

Duh, the normal, everyday silver pieces are clad, which means sandwiched  with copper instead of solid.  A couple of bucks' worth of dimes or quarters looks like a gigantic, silver-and-reddish Oreo when held between the fingers.  And when you get one that's pure, there's no date reading required - the older coin gleams like Double Stuff under black light.

Maybe I skimped on the misstrikes (I did a quick visual as I pulled the required number for each roll).  But I look at it this way - I'm leaving more for you to find.